The group returns to Bloomington tonight to play at the Bishop Bar for the first night of touring in support of its new album, “Wake.” Supporting Struthers and her band is the local folk rock group Blind Uncle Harry.
Struthers said she is excited to play her first club show in Bloomington after having played in a festival setting.
“It seems like a place where we could actually build an audience,” she said.
Anyone coming out to one of the band’s shows should expect to see something fresh, Struthers said. Though many musicians are capable of playing the same exact show night after night, she said she aims to be ?different.
“I really tune in to the audience and try to create something with them and their energy,” Struthers said.
The tour is going to be extensive, Struthers said. Her website lists a string of shows almost every day until May 21. Once May comes around, Struthers said the band will spend the summer playing festivals, hit the road again in the fall and more or less end the tour in December.
The band officially released its new album Tuesday. Struthers said she listened to the album while she drove from her house to shop for new stage clothes and other tour supplies.
“I still like it, so that’s good,” Struthers said.
“Wake” is a very different album from what she has done in the past, Struthers said. She is moving away from the folk-sounding “narrative-based story songs” of her previous albums and said this album is mostly composed of personal songs with a more rock ‘n’ roll sound.
For the album’s writing, Struthers said she also tried a new method in which she didn’t allow herself to edit while she created the songs.
“My personal musical journey has followed an American musical path,” she said about her sound.
Struther’s American musical path started with folk and ballads, she said, and she found herself moving to “old-time banjo music,” then to bluegrass, then to old country music and now to ?rock ‘n’ roll.
Writing for “American Songwriter,” Jonathan Bernstein said Struther’s blend of genres creates a sound on the album that resembles “early Neko Case, the Jayhawks and, most strikingly, Kathleen ?Edwards.”
“You can hear all those layers in our current sounds,” she said.
